Affordable Desktop Publishing From Serif

Can't afford QuarkXPress or InDesign? Serif PagePlus X5 offers high-end features for much less money.

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Say the words "desktop publishing" and most people think of Adobe Indesign CS5 and QuarkXPress, (and, if they're old enough, maybe Aldus PageMaker). But both of those design heavyweights have equally hefty pricetagscosting $700 and $800, respectively. Even Microsoft's DTP offering, Publisher, costs $500since you have to buy Microsoft Office 2010 Professional to get it.

What if you need to design something on a budget, say a flier or a brochure whose ROI might be less than the cost of those apps? One new choice as of this week is Serif PagePlus X5, a new DTP software package that's available for the far less daunting price of $100.

The latest offering from U.K.-based desktop-publishing and graphic-design software house Serif is, despite its price, a fully functional desktop publishing app that offers some impressive high-end features. PagePlus X5 lets designers work in the CMYK color space and it also offers unusual typography features like optical margin alignment (which lets you hang a part of a character in the margin for visual effect).

The latest version of PagePlus adds advanced OpenType font features, for more ornamental documents, with swashes, easier-to-read fractions, and paired characters. PDF support is also improved, with better color management, standards compliance, and handling of grayscale and lacks, as well as new PDF scaling options. Document management is updated, and there are more professionally designed themed layouts available, as well as new Smart Text features, for more intelligent text that updates automatically. Among the many other improvements is more advanced drawing power; designers can now add styles and transparency to the outlines of shapes and pictures. Outlines can be detached from objects, and designers also have more control over how the fillable area of a shape is calculated.

Serif PagePlus X5 is compatible with Window 7, Vista, and XP, and is available for $100 via direct download from www.serif.com.

Twitter: SCarrollPCMag
Sean Carroll is the managing editor of PCMag.com's Software, Internet, and Networking team, which includes all consumer security reviews, game reviews, and SMB software and service reviews. He considers that to mean that he can browse the Internet at work with impunity; plus, he gets to play with the coolest software and games in the world. Before joining PCMag, he was an English teacher, a computer salesman (Macs) and an editor of travel and electronic-warfare magazines.
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